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Did Scott's own South Pole team seal his fate?

5 September 2012

THE death of Robert Falcon Scott as he returned from the South Pole may partly have been the result of the actions of his own colleagues, a new book claims.

En route to the South Pole, Scott’s team laid down depots of food and fuel. It is well known that they found supplies low at some of these on the way back. Now Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales in Sydney claims there was a shortfall on the return leg that has only recently come to light. He has discovered notes from a meeting in 1914 between the widow of Edward Wilson, who died with Scott, and the president of the Royal Geographical Society. At the meeting, Oriana Wilson revealed that her husband’s diary mentions an “inexplicable” food shortage on the return journey. Turney believes this refers to a depot reached on 24 February 1912, when the team were on the home stretch, and starving.

Turney points the finger at Teddy Evans, Scott’s second-in-command, whom Scott told to turn back 200 kilometres from the pole. Evans then got scurvy and had to be pulled on a sledge, which may have caused his group to take more than their fair share of food.

Scott died just 18 kilometres from the final food depot. Had he reached it, he probably would have survived.

Turney’s claims appear in 1912&colon; The year the world discovered Antarctica, published this week.